TheLoop21.com

By: Keli Goff (Add to your loop)
Thu, 11/05/2009 - 12:47

I was overcome with tears of joy for those who never thought they’d live to see such a moment.

My parents’ generation has countless “Where were you when…” memories from their younger years. There were moments of triumph—the first moon landing, the I Have a Dream speech—but as I was reminded while watching the drama Mad Men the other night, there were many more moments of tragedy, heartbreak and tears. There was President Kennedy’s assassination, followed by Dr. Martin Luther King’s and Sen. Robert Kennedy’s shortly after.

My generation certainly has its defining moments as well. When it comes to heartbreak, nothing surpasses September 11th but when it comes to tears, at least for me, so far nothing has surpassed November 4, 2008—the day Barack Obama was elected president.

For we political media types, Election Day is to us what the Super Bowl is to the sports world and what the Academy Awards is to Hollywood. So while my friends and family were hosting and attending various Election night watch parties, I spent the night of the election working. After appearing on BBC and CNN, I spent most of election night at BET where I was working as a contributor for the program The Truth with Jeff Johnson. I was there, live on the air, as the returns came in and we watched as state by state, Barack Obama inched closer to history.

I’m not exactly sure when it happened, mainly because I can’t bring myself to watch the footage even today, but when the moment finally came, and Sen. Barack Obama became president-elect Obama, the tears began to fall. I was mortified, and to some degree still am. Members of the media are supposed to maintain a veneer of professionalism at all times (try not to laugh) and I knew that mine flew right out the window the moment I began to weep. I also knew some could try to use my breakdown as evidence that the so-called “liberal media” had been in the bag for Obama all along, more specifically that Black members of the media had. But as I tried to explain that night (albeit not very coherently), the story of my tears was much deeper than that.

Though I was certainly overjoyed that our nation took such a tremendous leap forward that day, it wouldn’t be accurate to say that I was merely overcome with tears of joy by Obama’s victory. The truth is I was overcome with tears of joy for those who never thought they’d live to see such a moment, including my nearly 90-year-old grandmother and my mom. Both lived through the segregated South and the degradation that entailed, yet also lived long enough to see an America in which Black people can not only vote in the South, but can vote for a Black president—and a substantial number of white people vote for him too. But I was also overcome with tears of sadness for those who were no longer here to share in the joy of the moment, including my friend and mentor Terence Tolbert, an Obama campaign staffer, who like Obama’s beloved grandmother, got to see much of the journey through but didn’t quite make it to the Promised Land.

So while it may not have been one of my professional highlights, because of the tears, November 4th was a personal highlight for myself, my generation and our country.

Keli Goff is a political blogger for TheLoop21.com. She is the author of the critically acclaimed book Party Crashing: How the Hip-Hop Generation Declared Political Independence (Basic Books, March 2008). She is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post and previously served as an editorial contributor to RushmoreDrive.com. Keli can be seen regularly on national news programs including Anderson Cooper 360, The CBS Early Show, Lou Dobbs and BET.
 

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